Len Deighton - Violent Ward by Violent Ward

Author:Violent Ward [Ward, Violent]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

I went home to Woodland Hills and shuffled through some newly arrived bills. After opening a can of dog food for Rex I told him about my trip toTopangaCanyon. Rex was mad because I hadn’t taken him along, but I explained there were other dogs there, big critters that might have torn him to pieces. Rex wagged his tail-,he saw the sense of that. I switched on the TV. There was a talk show about fathers who don’t spend enough time with the kids. What about mothers who come into a guy’s office and pretend they’re going to leap off the window ledge? I switched off the sound. I have this large screen projection TV. People look almost life-size.

With the sound turned off it provides all the companionship of friends and neighbors with none of their demands for food, drink, and flattery. I sat watching this silent show. A sleek-haired guy with a microphone was running around lithely and blithely, selecting mothers and kids in the audience who stood up on cue, opened their mouths, and waved their arms around. It was restful to watch.

And I thought about the old man of Topanga and his lovely car. Sometimes when you get away from a meeting you see it all in a new perspective. Of course Pindero was stoned out of his mind, but that didn’t explain why he was moving around, covering his tracks and giving out false names. And would Petrovitch really want to push Jack Piech under a beer truck? It was all crazy talk, but almost anything is possible. Just sit in my office for a week and you’ll believe it.

I had been thinking of Ingrid a lot. I loved her. I really adored her. I even found myself reluctant to go out of the house on errands just in case she phoned me and I wasn’t there to take the call. I know that’s teenage stuff, but meeting her again had renewed all the adoration I stored up over the years. Even the prospect of speaking to her was enough to give me a glow. I phoned Ingrid at theAspenhouse. “I think I found your guy,” I said, after she’d given out with a cautious hello that made my scalp tingle.

She said, “You must have the wrong number. Please check your phone book and don’t call this number again.”

She’d recognized my voice okay. Ingrid was scared or I was very much mistaken. Very very scared, if her voice was anything to judge by. And that gave me a sick feeling in the stomach. You know what it’s like when you love someone desperately and you feel they are in some kind of trouble. I replaced the phone and sat there thinking about it. Poor Ingrid. No one except me understood what she was really like: vulnerable and childlike. I made coffee and watched somemore lousy TV; that always helps me think.

Talk shows, more about the Rodney King trial, a Cosby rerun, and then the news came on.

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